Abstract:
Water scarcity and land
degradation are emerging threats to global
food production. The dry land regions of
world are affected by climate change to a
greater extent and facing food insecurity.
The current pattern of food production has
been estimated to be inadequate to meet
demands of growing population and
required around 38% increase to meet
world`s food demands by 2025. Food
insecurity in erosion hit dry land regions of
Pakistan also demands development of
resource-efficient cropping systems to meet
the food needs of population growing. The
research studies involved different cropping
patterns such as fallow-wheat, mungbeanwheat,
sorghum-wheat, fallow-lentil,
mungbean-lentil, sorghum-lentil, fallowbarley,
mungbean-barley and sorghumbarley.
The organic amendments involved
farmyard manure, NPK, poultry manure,
compost and inoculation by phosphorus
solubilizing microbes. The effect of
cropping systems and soil amendments were
evaluated at field scale in terms of water use
efficiency measured in terms of economic
terms. The results of the studies revealed
that double cropping (mungbean-lentil and
mungbean-barley) was feasible option in the
dryland regions of Pakistan if integrated
with the use of poultry manure as alternate
environmental-friendly strategy to cut down
the use of mineral fertilizers and eliminate
summer fallowing.
